Chapter 16: Vows and Vengeance

The ring was simple.

Matteo slid it onto her finger beneath the golden glow of the Jaipur dusk — no priest, no crowd, no syndicate shadows watching. Just the two of them on the rooftop of the bookstore, a bottle of Italian wine, and a string of fairy lights swaying in the breeze.

Aaravi had tears in her eyes.

“I thought I’d have a big wedding someday,” she said with a soft laugh. “Hundreds of people. Sarees and sweets and drama.”

Matteo’s lips brushed her temple. “You can still have that. I’ll give you ten weddings if that’s what you want.”

She turned to him. “I only want one. But I want it to be ours.”

And so, with vows whispered between soft kisses, they married themselves.

No paperwork. No politics.

Only love, raw and quiet.

---

But the world didn’t care about love.

Two days later, Helena returned from Mumbai — bruised and furious.

“They’re calling it a power vacuum,” she said, throwing a folder on Matteo’s desk. “Now that Ravan’s dead, the Russians are sniffing around. The Dubai cartel too. You think bloodshed ends with one corpse? You should know better.”

Matteo flipped through the photos.

Explosions. Hit lists. Guns.

He sighed. “They won’t touch India.”

“You sure?” Helena snapped. “Because your little honeymoon gave them time.”

Aaravi walked in then, calm and quiet, in a soft yellow kurta. She stood next to Matteo and looked at the photos over his shoulder.

“They want war?” she asked. “Let them come.”

Helena looked stunned. “You trained her?”

Matteo smiled without humor. “She trained herself.”

---

Later that night, when the city was asleep and Matteo stood on the balcony shirtless, phone pressed to his ear, Aaravi came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

He was tense. Thinking. Planning.

Always.

“You okay?” she murmured against his back.

“They’ll come,” he said. “I can feel it.”

She rested her cheek against his spine. “Then we fight.”

He turned, grabbed her wrists gently.

“I promised to keep you out of this.”

“You promised to build a home. You don’t build homes by hiding in them.”

She met his eyes.

“We do this together, Matteo. Or not at all.”

And there, beneath the stars and danger, he realized—

She wasn’t the girl he’d found in a bookstore anymore.

She was fire.

She was his queen.

---

The war came two nights later.

Helena called at 3:07 a.m.

“They bombed our warehouse in Mumbai. Nico barely made it out.”

Matteo was dressed and armed in minutes. “Contact Dubai. Make them talk.”

“They won’t.”

“Then we’ll speak in their language.”

Aaravi walked into the room in a black kurta, a dagger strapped to her thigh.

“I’m coming,” she said.

He didn’t argue this time.

He only kissed her.

Hard.

Like a goodbye.

---

The shootout at the Mumbai docks lasted seventeen minutes.

Seventeen minutes of blood and bullets.

Aaravi took her first real shot that night — not a mercy kill, not revenge. Just war.

She saved Matteo’s life.

A man came from the side, gun raised. Matteo didn’t see him.

But she did.

And she pulled the trigger before she could think, before she could breathe, before her heart could scream at her to stop.

Afterward, she sat in the backseat of the car, hands shaking.

Matteo slid in beside her, bruised and bloodied, and pulled her close.

“You saved me,” he whispered.

“I took a life,” she choked out.

“You saved mine.”

She buried her face in his chest and let herself fall apart in silence.

He held her through every tremble.

Every tear.

Every breath.

---

Back in Jaipur, they stood in the bookstore once more.

But nothing was the same.

The world had changed.

So had they.

“You okay?” Matteo asked as he poured her tea.

Aaravi looked at him. This man — blood-soaked, broken, and hers.

She took the cup and smiled.

“I’m ready for whatever comes next.”

And he believed her.

Beneath the Crown?

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***